


Though I Adore the Boy Next Door

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mutual Pining, POV Multiple, SHIELD family dynamics, Slow Burn, Spot The Reference, hence all these character and relationship tags, just so you know, next door neighbors au, the Tripskye shows up eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4195212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Leo Fitz moves in next door to Jemma Simmons, everyone can see that they're perfect for each other.  Except them.</p><p>Or, how do you measure a year in the life of friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. California English (Skye, January)

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is from a different POV and I plan on posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. There's also an accompanying playlist, of all the songs that are the chapter titles (aka what I listened to on repeat when I wrote this), and I'm planning on posting that at the end!
> 
> Many thanks to ardentaislinn for betaing a problem chapter (and generally being awesome)!

_6:00am. Fitz. Fitz. Fiiiiiitz  
6:05am. Fitzy. Fitz-icle. Fitz-a-fitz.  
6:08am. Leopold._  
 **6:08am. Skye. No. Morning. Sleep.**  
 _6:10am. Know what today is?_  
 **6:15am. Saturday. Day for sleeping.**  
 _6:15am. Guess again._  
 _6:17am. You're no fun. Today is....moving day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D_

Skye liked to think of herself as the best best friend Leopold Fitz had ever had. (And if his college roommate Mack wanted to disagree with her, he could suck it.) She'd met him the first week of freshman year, after her roommate had sexiled her. At three in the afternoon. While Skye was in the shower. So she'd knocked on every door until Fitz opened his and then sat on his floor in a towel and played Scrabble with him for three hours. She'd repaid the favor by baking him cookies (from frozen cookie dough, but still), watching TV with him on Friday nights when she could have been out flirting with emotionally screwed up but still hot guys, like her complete asshole of an ex-boyfriend, always losing at Scrabble (totally on purpose), making him earthquake-proof their rooms (they totally lived on a fault line), and setting him up with every eligible girl in a twenty-mile radius. However, her best best friend status most definitely did not extend to not complaining about helping him move in.

“Hey, Fitz,” she shouted, grabbing another stack of cardboard boxes labeled simply Who. “I figured out how much a fuckton is.” 

“Skye, why are all the hills so steep here?” he panted, leaning against the banister, face barely visible behind a pile of lamps, stacked on top of yet more cardboard boxes. Skye thought vaguely that she should probably stop him before he got crushed by any of his furniture. Maybe find a hot neighbor to carry the aforementioned furniture? “And why couldn't I find a parking space that wasn't five blocks away?”

“Welcome to San Francisco,” she said and glared up at the stairs. “Fitz...aren't you going to ask me how much a fuckton is?” His only response was a faint whimper. “It's how much stuff you have. Why do you have so much stuff anyway? I thought we did that purge thing.”

“The purge thing was a terrible idea,” he replied. Behind the lamps, Skye could tell that he was making a face. “You wanted me to throw out every piece of furniture I'd ever had sex with my ex-girlfriend on. By the time you were done, I didn't have a bed, a kitchen table, or a living room.”

“You let me do it! So there,” Skye added and stuck her tongue out at him. 

“You got me drunk,” he huffed. “With that awful pink stuff that tasted like raspberries.”

“It was catharsis,” she said smugly. “I took Psych 101, so I know what I'm talking about. Also, if we don't finish moving in all your stuff soon, you're probably going to get a parking ticket.” Fitz made another whimpering noise. “But then we can go to Ikea and buy you new furniture. And meatballs. Lots of meatballs. Enough so we never have to go back to Emeryville.” Skye grimaced. She was pretty sure she'd had a one night stand in Emeryville—he'd worked at Pixar or something and he'd had a Mike Wozowski model sitting on his shelf that Skye had been convinced was watching them. God, she needed to find better one night stands. Or two-night stands. Or maybe if she was really lucky, a whole month stand. If that was a thing? _Considering your track record, good luck with that_ a nasty little voice whispered in the back of her head. She told it to shut up. Either way, she really hoped that Fitz had a hot neighbor. (With the rent he was paying, he _deserved_ a hot neighbor.)

“You go all the way to Mountain View for work,” Fitz pointed out. 

“That's different. Besides, I work for Google—it's like its own country. They'll be printing their own currency any day now.” Skye had gotten the job at Google right after college, after she'd hacked her way into their mainframe, and she'd started begging Fitz to move out to California almost a year ago. But he'd been in the middle of the Thing They Were Not Talking About Anymore and life had been...weird. “We're wasting precious Ikea time,” she finally said when Fitz showed no sign of moving. “Time that could be used deciding between the Pippi and the Longstocking beds. Maybe even buying some of those weird frozen berries they sell there.”

“Those are not their real names,” Fitz panted, and forced the stack of boxes and lamps up a few more steps. “It doesn't even have an umlaut. Also, I still can't believe that you made me get rid of my bed.”

“It was therapeutic!” Skye shouted back. Because back then, the night that it had all ended, Fitz had been working his way through a box of photos and a bottle of vodka and Skye had wondered if he was ever going to move from that one spot on his couch. Worse than that, she had wondered if he was ever going to be over _her_ (who Skye had had a bad feeling about from the very beginning, thank you very much, if only because of the way she'd asked Skye what she was going to hack next, nose turned up, smirk plastered across her face). So clearly a major exorcism had been in order. It wasn't like Fitz owned any furniture that didn't come straight from the thrift store—there had been that one stain on his couch that everyone always avoided sitting on.

Skye (fucking finally) reached Fitz's door and set down the stack of boxes with a loud thump. Ten down, ten to go—why had Fitz decided to live on the fifth floor anyway? Especially when the elevator had been out of service for about forever. She swung the door open to move the boxes into the living room and—wow. That was why Fitz was living on the fifth floor. There was an amazing view of the bay from his window, all the way over to the Golden Gate. “Fitz, come see your view!” she called down the stairs. No response. “You aren't dead, are you?”

“Not yet,” Fitz forced out, maneuvering his stack of stuff through the door. At least, she thought it was Fitz-- “Do I really need the stuff that's still in the car?”

“It's your plates, so yes. Come on.” Skye dragged him up from the floor, where he'd collapsed, sprawled flat, and back down the stairs. “No rest for the wicked.”

They'd just gotten the last of the boxes in when there was a knock on the door. Probably the president of the building again, a middle-aged man with wildly curly hair and a bit of a power complex who'd presented Fitz with a leather-bound set of the official building regulations after he'd signed all the papers. (He'd been in government—some kind of super high up muckety muck—and according to his wife, he was having some trouble letting go.) “I'll get it,” Skye told Fitz, who'd collapsed on the floor again, gasping for breath and kind of looking like a skinny beached whale. In plaid. “Because I'm awesome like that.”

It was not the power-mad building manager, or his kind of fantastic wife, or any of the other people they'd literally bumped into on the stairs. It was a gift from the apartment gods themselves. Because, in fact, Fitz did have a hot neighbor. Even if she wasn't the kind of hot neighbor that Skye had been hoping for. “Hello,” the hot neighbor said. “I heard some noise on the stairs and then I remembered the newsletter about a new resident, so I thought I should stop by and say hi. I normally make welcome baskets for new residents but I was at yoga class this morning and I have brunch reservations at noon—anyway, do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions? I like to make all inclusive welcome baskets.”

“I don't live here. I'm just helping that one move in.” Skye pointed over her shoulder at Fitz, eyes shut in exhaustion and covered in dust from the floor. “And he eats everything, as long as it doesn't involve intestines.”

“Intestines aren't real food,” Fitz mumbled. Then he opened his eyes and sprang up off the floor so fast that he almost fell back down again. Skye told herself that being an awesome best friend involved not laughing. 

“Hi. Sorry! I wasn't ignoring you, I swear, I just had my eyes closed. As you probably saw. But yes, I moved in today. I live here now. Which is kind of weird, but good.” Fitz was doing the pregnant woman stance again. Skye thought that she should probably tell him about that someday. “I'm Leo Fitz. Hi again.”

“Jemma Simmons,” the hot neighbor—that was what Skye was going to call her forever and ever now, especially considering the way that Fitz was trying very hard not to stare at her—said and shook hands with Fitz. Their eyes met and Fitz looked at Jemma. Jemma looked at Fitz. They were still holding on to each other's hands. Skye had a good feeling about this.


	2. A Life That's Good (Coulson, February)

_“Hello, you've reached the voice mail of Phil Coulson. I'm not available to take your call right now but I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Please note that Saturdays are family days and I won't be able to return your call until Sunday morning. Unless you're Steve Rogers.”_

_“Super Architect Man! It's Tony. So I was thinking about the designs you drew up for the house in Malibu and I'm thinking it needs a little more oomph. Something that says a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist lives here. Emphasis on the genius part. I was thinking maybe some kind of robot by the door, maybe a whole line of rob--”_

_“Hi, Phil. This is Pepper. If you let Tony get within six feet of a robot, I swear to god that I will tell Steve about the action figure collection.”_

It was Saturday so Phil Coulson was taking the kids out for dim sum. A voice inside his head that sounded suspiciously like his business partner Melinda reminded him that technically, Fitz and Skye weren't his kids. He ignored it. Because, ever since he'd first met Fitz, back when Fitz had still been in college and interning for Phil's architecture firm over the summer, a thousand miles from home and without the money for a ticket back, still gawky and awkward and not completely sure how to tie a tie, he'd felt responsible for him. And then for Skye, who Fitz had brought as his platonic date to some black-tie function and who had cracked a joke about the DJ's choice of music that had made Nick Fury, the city's notoriously straight-faced police commissioner, laugh. And then somehow for Hunter, the firm's resident lawyer, who supposedly was a responsible adult but showed no signs of it and who needed someone to stop him from drunk dialing his ex-wife. And then...The point was, people found Phil. People who needed terrible dad jokes and dietary interventions and to learn to appreciate the value of classic cars. And maybe, after years of trying for children with Audrey and watching the sorrow spread across her face every time another pregnancy test result came up negative, he needed them too.

Either way, Saturday was dim sum day and most people knew to respect dim sum day. Tony Stark was not most people. Phil frowned disapprovingly at his phone and switched it to silent. “You know, I could probably pull off that robot thing if you wanted me to,” Fitz offered casually. “Or just draw up some specs for it—Pepper doesn't have any blackmail on me.”

“Pepper has blackmail on everyone. She just hasn't had to use it on you yet.” Phil still didn't know how she had found out about his (mint condition, still in the original packaging) collection of figures of national hero Captain Steve Rogers, safely locked away in a top-secret vault at Wells Fargo. He rolled up the plans for Pemberley Digital's new headquarters that he'd brought for Fitz to look over before Tony Stark had interrupted and checked his watch—they had to get going soon if they wanted to keep their table. “Skye's late.”

“She'll meet us there. I think she had a date with Lincoln last night?” Fitz shrugged. “The electrical engineer?”

“She should bring him by for lunch sometime.” Phil did like meeting Skye's boyfriends, especially the ones who laughed at his jokes in an attempt to get on his good side. The fact that lunches were prime interrogation opportunities was just an added bonus. The best ones were when May came along for lunch and gave the latest boyfriend her signature stare until they cracked. 

“I think she's waiting until you promise to stop with the criminal background checks,” Fitz said and swung the door open. “Hunter's coming along today, too, right? You know, at first I kind of wanted to punch him but after that night in San Diego, I think it may be the beginning of a beautiful—Jemma!”

Fitz's neighbor was standing in her doorway, bag of recycling propped against her hip, and Fitz had stopped right in the middle of the hallway to say hi to her, beaming and practically bouncing as they talked. Interesting. Phil had only seen Fitz's neighbor in passing, quick smiles and waves in the hallways, but lately, it seemed like Fitz slipped her name into every other sentence, even when he didn't know he was doing it. (May had been the first one to point it out, but Phil was the one keeping track.)

Fitz and Jemma were both blushing faintly as they talked to each other, glancing down at their feet and shifting around each other like they'd be electrocuted if they touched, but they talked over and around and with each other's sentences and they were both smiling madly at each other as they did it, so Phil took that as a good sign. They were still happily jabbering away, too fast for anyone else to understand, when Phil's phone rang. “Phil, if you aren't here in fifteen minutes, Skye, Audrey, and I are going to eat all the dumplings ourselves,” May said flatly. Then she hung up.

“Ms. Simmons?” Phil asked. Both Fitz and Simmons turned to look at him in unison. “Do you want to come to dim sum with us?” 

They did some kind of odd nodding and staring at each other thing—telepathic communication? he'd have to ask Skye about it—before she said yes. They could probably fit one more person in at their usual table and, noticing the way that Fitz automatically went to sit beside Jemma in the backseat of the car and how they kept on talking all the way to the restaurant, Phil was fairly sure that Fitz would have sulked all the way there if they hadn't taken her along with them.

And later, watching Jemma Simmons talk Fitz into eating multiple somethings with spinach in them, Phil decided that he approved.


	3. New Romantics (Callie, March)

_Jemma I'm here!!!!!!_  
Flight got in super early. Weird.  
Where are youuu?  
Are you still at work? You're still at work, aren't you? JEMMA IT'S FRIDAY.  
Taking train in and coming to your house. Going to lurk outside your door.  
I looooove you, g-g-big.  <3 <3 <3  
Callie Hannigan was always early. She'd learned it from Jemma herself, along with the ability to pull together a cute, color-coordinated outfit in less than five minutes on five hours of sleep, the technique for mixing a perfect margarita, the best way to take notes in Professor Weaver's notoriously difficult Organic Chem class, and the exact right amount of glitter to use while crafting. If you asked Callie, Jemma was kind of perfect. Except for her way too intense work ethic. They were definitely going out as soon as Jemma got back, finding some nine-dollar hipster cocktails, and then having a serious talk about work-life balance when they were both sober again. Because Callie loved Jemma, but she'd seen the dark circles under her eyes and the weary note in her voice in their latest Skype sessions and if this took a full-on intervention, well...Callie had learned how to overachieve from the best. 

Her phone buzzed with a text two blocks from Jemma's apartment: _Oh no so sorry! Fitz should have the spare key. Can't wait to see you!!!!!!!_ One of Callie's perfectly plucked eyebrows went up at that. Jemma didn't just give people her spare keys: she made them go through a long series of security protocols and alertness tests until she finally deemed them worthy. (Freshman year, her roommate had left their door unlocked and some drunk lacrosse player had ruined her samples—Jemma had nearly cried when she'd found out, according to the story she told Callie years later.) So either this Fitz guy had passed all the tests in record time or he was the new boyfriend Jemma had mentioned a few weeks ago and she was simply blinded by hormones. Had to be a boyfriend. Definitely.

When her cab pulled up to Jemma's building, there was a skinny, curly-haired guy waiting outside. “Callie, right?” he called. “Jemma talks about you all the time.” Knowing who she was—point. Getting her luggage out of the trunk of the cab—another point. Offering to make her tea while they waited for Jemma—point number three and a new record for Jemma's boyfriends. Callie examined him more carefully. He definitely didn't look like Jemma's usual type—no bulging muscles in sight, more awkward than suave, as he nearly dropped her suitcase on his foot, IQ at least fifty points higher than the average, as Callie spotted the prototype tucked into his back pocket—but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Fitz _did_ seem sweet and maybe he was wildly good in bed or something like that. For Jemma's sake, she hoped so. 

“So when did you and Jemma meet?” Callie finally interrupted, in the middle of a long tangent about the time he and Jemma had gone shopping for a new teapot.

“About three months ago, when I moved in next door,” Fitz said brightly. “I was actually covered in dust and complaining on the floor when I met her.”

“That's weirdly adorable.” She tilted her head to one side and looked at him again, trying to imagine if Fitz covered in dust could be attractive. She didn't quite think so.

“We get that a lot.” Fitz winced.

“How soon did you get together, then? Did Jemma pull the showing up at your door in a coat and nothing else trick? She totally did, didn't she?” Callie grinned wickedly at Fitz, who seemed to be choking on something. 

“Jemma and I...we're not...we don't...we're not together,” he finally managed, still a brilliant shade of red.

“Really? Are you sure?” Callie pressed and leaned forward with an interrogatory gleam in her eye. “No friends-with-benefits thing? No we don't do labels thing? 

“I think I would know if I was dating Jemma.” Luckily for Fitz, Jemma arrived just _after_ he'd finished his sentence.

“Callie!” she squealed, throwing her arms around the other girl. “I'm so, so sorry that I was late. We're growing this new culture at the lab and I thought if I just tried it in another...anyway, hi!!! I hope you didn't terrorize Fitz too much.”

“I survived,” Fitz said weakly.

“Fitz is amazing,” Jemma chirped and sent him a tiny bright smile, mouth slowly curling up around the edges like she was telling him a secret. Jemma saved up smiles for people: a huge, mischievous grin for Callie, the flirty smile for her boy of the moment, the professional half-smile for her lab, and the patient smile, teeth tightly clenched, that only appeared for her parents. And now, apparently, a smile for Fitz. Callie didn't say anything about it, just watched the way that Fitz smiled back, how their shoulders tilted towards each other as they talked, and thought that if they weren't dating by the end of the year, she would know that she was losing her touch.

She was good and didn't even ask Jemma about it when they went out for dinner at some upscale pizza place, letting Jemma ask her questions about where she was applying to grad school and whether or not the boys had blown up anything yet this semester. In fact, she didn't say anything about it the whole week, not while they were conducting cupcake taste tests or taking pictures of tourists taking pictures on Alcatraz, or making up deep and insightful commentaries on paintings of red circles at the modern art museum, or sneaking into Jemma's lab after hours so Callie could see her work or drinking overpriced cocktails with three different kinds of alcohol in them. She didn't say anything when Fitz brought over Jemma's favorite basil and cream pizza from the place that always had a line out the door, or when he came to get them from a random bar in the Mission at three in the morning and stopped for drive-through donuts, or even when he fixed every smoke detector in the building after the people in number eleven set each and every last one off trying to make a souffle.

She talked to Jemma about plenty of other things, like her supervisor who kept on pushing for positive results and who Callie thought she wouldn't mind trapping inside an MRI machine for extended periods of time. Or her latest well-formed and symmetrical boyfriend, who finally showed up three days later with a bouquet of sunflowers and a half-assed apology. She couldn't fix any of that permanently, couldn't tell anyone who made Jemma unhappy to go fuck themselves, but she could make Jemma leave work at five instead of eight and buy actual groceries and finally put up the framed vintage periodic table that had been gathering dust in the back of her closet for at least six months. And, underneath the dark circles and the sighs, Callie thought that Jemma actually seemed better. A little happier than when she'd first moved to the city

She did say something to Fitz though, the last night before she left when it was just them in a booth, nursing their drinks and watching everyone else on the dance floor. “You'll look out for Jemma, won't you?” she blurted out, tracing circles with her finger on the frosted side of her glass and avoiding his eyes. “Not that she needs looking out for—she's independent and tough and brilliant and everything like that—she's like my big sister, the one who always knows best. But she pushes herself, you know. Sometimes a little too much. And she just needs someone to be there when she does. To catch her when she falls or some sentimental shit like that.” Fitz just nodded solemnly in response.

They didn't talk about it for the rest of the night but at the end of the night, when Fitz helped her guide a drunk Jemma out of the cab and up the stairs, promising Jemma that it was just a few more steps till science, he looked over Jemma's head to meet Callie's eyes and mouthed “Don't worry” at her.

So she didn't.


	4. Mr. Brightside (Hunter, April)

_From: lance.hunter@coulsonmay.com_  
_To: leopold.fitz@coulsonmay.com  
_ _Fitz? About the legal thing you wanted to ask me about? You didn't steal anything, did you? Or beat up someone? Because I'm not that kind of lawyer. Also, if you got married in Vegas and need a quickie divorce? Not that kind of lawyer either. Or if you're going bankrupt or about to get deported... Definitely not that kind of lawyer._

“I'm the well-paid kind of lawyer,” Lance explained. Or in the words of his ex-wife, a corporate sell-out. God, no one knew how to deliver an insult like her. “But not the well paid intellectual property kind. Idaho's a patent lawyer, though. I can give him your number if you want.” Every Friday, Lance met up with Idaho and Izzy, his two best friends from law school, and they all got drunk and loudly complained about their clients together. One time they'd tried every craft beer the bar had (including the one that might have been illegal) and come up with twenty new billable expenses for Izzy's asshole client. It had been fucking _glorious._

“A joint patent,” Fitz corrected. “Jemma and I worked on the device together, and we should get equal credit. Although I came up with the name,” he added smugly.

“Yeah, the name. The name is, ah...the name sucks,” Lance said flatly. “Something called the night-night gun doesn't sound like it knocks people out. You should call it the Smiter. Or the Ice Machine. Or the--”

“You sound just like Jemma,” Fitz grumbled. 

“I do not,” Lance said instantly. Jemma Simmons was the annoying little sister he'd never wanted to have. She pointed out mistakes in his paperwork whenever he came over to Fitz's after work, she rolled her eyes at him when he mixed up Star Trek and Star Wars (they both had Star in the title, all right), and, worst of all, she was best friends with his ex-wife. But Fitz looked at her with those stupid puppy-dog eyes and she did know more about everything than any normal human did and after and after she'd helped him win the pub trivia competition at the one English pub in the entire city, he'd decided that he could put up with her.

“You do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.” Fitz repeated. “Same accent and everything. Of course, hers is much...nicer.” Fitz trailed off, one of those ridiculous smiles spreading across his face, and Lance sighed. Here they went again. Jemma's voice was like a choir of angels, or silver bells ringing out in perfect harmony. Her research was going to cure some disease that Lance couldn't pronounce; she inspired small children on her days off, blah blah blah.

“Just kiss the girl already, Fitz,” Lance interrupted. Deep down in his soul, he kind of thought that Fitz and Jemma would make a cute couple. In their weird, nerdy, finishing each other's sentences kind of way. He'd deny it to hell and back if anyone asked him, though. 

“She has a boyfriend,” Fitz said flatly. “Big, muscly, can move her furniture without dropping it on his own feet and needing to be driven to the emergency room.”

“We can break them up. Izzy's a great divorce lawyer for a reason,” Lance offered. Fitz just gave him a _look_. “ She'll have muscle man out the door before you can offer to assemble Jemma's IKEA bookshelves without the manual again. I mean you've seen Izzy play poker, right?” They both shuddered in unison—it had been a terrifying evening, worse than the time Lance went to see _The Shining_ by himself and bolted for the exit halfway through the movie.

“And Jemma'll start dating the next guy with a symmetrical face and a low body fat percentage that walks by. She doesn't think of me that way, probably never will. But that's all right, I think. These things—the way I feel—it comes and it goes, doesn't it?” Fitz shuffled his folder of papers around on the desk once, twice, then sighed and shoved them back into his bag. “Because she's one of my best friends and she's brilliant and she's wonderful and together we made something great and that's enough, you know? Getting to be her friend, getting just a little part of her life, would be worth it no matter what. Because she's _Jemma_ ,” Fitz said her name like it explained the universe, weird tiny particles, black holes, and all and Lance felt a weird stirring somewhere around his heart. He used to talk about Bobbi like that, still did sometimes when he'd had enough to drink and not enough to forget, when he could ignore all the newspaper articles about her and that stupid Olympic archer, who worked with disadvantaged children and had a rescue dog and who Bobbi probably saved the world with every other Sunday. But the point wasn't the Olympic archer (Clinton Barton, which Lance was pretty sure wasn't even a real name). The important thing was that he knew what it felt like: that moment when everything tilted and shifted and out of nowhere, your world rearranged itself around something—someone—new. And no matter how hard he'd tried, Lance had never really been able to make his own world go back to what it once was. 

He opened his mouth to offer _something_ —a pretty friend to set Fitz up with, one last advertisement for Izzy's services as a break-up artist or, if things got really drastic, the help of Izzy's girlfriend Vic, some movie with explosions in it, anything that served as a temporary distraction—and for the first (and only) time, Lance Hunter knew better. Instead Fitz just hunched himself down in his chair and asked Lance more questions about the joint patent paperwork and setting up an appointment with Idaho and Lance answered them.

But when Fitz turned to leave, Lance found himself opening his mouth again. “You know, man, I've got about six bottles of cider in my fridge and the special edition DVD of _Notting Hill_. If you need to hang out and not say anything.”

And, as it turned out, sometimes he did.


	5. You've Got to Earn It (Mack, May)

_Hertz Car Rental Customer Complaint Form_  
_Branch location: SFO_  
_Date: May 25, 2015_  
_Customer Name: Alphonso Mackenzie  
_ _Please describe your complaint: If I want a damn minivan, I'll ask for a damn minivan._

Mack tried not to analyze people, or even to give them advice unless they asked for it. If they wanted that kind of thing, they could go to a shrink. He knew machines and from spending years fixing people's machines, he knew people. And from knowing people, he'd figured out that when most people asked for advice, they really didn't want to hear anything other than what they thought themselves. But if you asked Mack, Fitz was the kind of person who needed to listen to someone who wasn't him, from the moment he'd tried to wire their freshman dorm room to get better WiFi and almost electrocuted himself in the process. Mack had physically hauled him away from the router and then gotten Fitz to flee the scene of the crime with the promise of pizza. (Their RA never did figure out who had done it.) Boy needed someone to save him from himself and Mack had just happened to be around.

He'd seen what happened with Raina coming from a mile away, of course. The moment that she started talking about kale and acai bowls, he'd gotten a bad feeling about her...even Skye had agreed with him for once, after Raina had canceled on Fitz for the fifth time in two weeks and they'd been left ordering lots of greasy takeout and trying to talk Fitz out of buying an original Star Trek phaser on Ebay. But of course, Fitz hadn't listened to either of them and then Mack had had to spend about four months playing the same damn video game and watching Doctor Who with Fitz while the other man sulked on his couch in his pajamas and ate popcorn. It had been a dark time for all of them. (Though thankfully free of quinoa.)

But now, Fitz seemed...okay. No empty scotch bottles in his recycling, no photographs facing the wall, actual food in his fridge. Fitz had even planned a road trip down to Santa Cruz for Memorial Day weekend and had bothered Mack about it until the other man had finally agreed to fly out from Colorado. Better than okay, Mack thought as he watched Fitz cheerfully buy huge amounts of pretzels and tortilla chips for the road. Dude was practically humming. And Mack couldn't quite figure out why.

Only, problem was he couldn't exactly just come right out and ask Fitz. Tact had never been his specialty but even he knew better than to ask Fitz what had taken him from brokenhearted to the Energizer Bunny in five months. Yes, Mack had _started_ to ask Fitz what the hell was going on, before Skye had kicked him under the table, hard enough to leave bruises. So instead Mack listened, just like he'd listen to an engine to hear if it was running smoothly. And all he heard was Fitz's neighbor.

He heard her the first day that he arrived, when she walked right in Fitz's door with her order for Thai takeout, a stack of Doctor Who DVDs, a hug for Skye, and a notebook full of modifications for some project she and Fitz were working on. Then he heard all about her for hours after she left, as Fitz happily babbled on—Jemma says this, Jemma does that—and Skye shot Mack significant looks from the kitchen counter she was perched on top of. (Short people seemed to be weirdly fixated on finding places that they could be taller from—what was up with that?) And then he heard even more about her from Bobbi, when he called her up to say hi and mentioned his friend's neighbor in passing, and then had to listen to at least half an hour of gushing. There was no escape.

Doctor Jemma Simmons was tiny, short enough that Mack had had to bend down to say hi the first time he met her, and incredibly bossy, especially when she was arguing with Fitz, and probably a force of nature. Fitz seemed to attract them and unlike the others, Mack had the sinking feeling that he kind of approved of her. After all, he thought on the day of the road trip, anyone that small who managed to call shotgun and get all the leg room probably deserved his respect. Even if she had brought a gigantic container of carrots and celery to their group picnic on the beach. At least she'd brought dip along with it.

He tried to listen to her and Fitz's conversation on the way down, figure out what exactly they were, but it was almost impossible to hear them over the sound of the radio, some band called NARKOTIKA playing, and the sound of Skye asking him questions about the weird noises her car was making. In the end, Mack didn't actually get the chance to talk to Jemma until later that afternoon, when they were both stuck on the same hole in the mini golf course. Fitz was nearly at the end of course, after he'd used his engineering skills to land a hole in one every time and so was Skye, after she'd accused him of having an unfair advantage and made him help her through every hole. Even Hunter had somehow managed to get most of the way through, by hitting the ball so hard that it went right over all the obstacles. Meanwhile, Coulson had secured a beer and an order of French fries, and was happily sitting on a bench by the course with May, who'd nearly been hit by a volleyball and who'd probably scarred the team of surfer bros who it had belonged to for life. She hadn't said anything, just stared at them until they slowly backed far, far away. It was stares like those that had gotten both May and Coulson out of having to play mini golf—Mack needed to ask her someday just how she did it. He still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about Melinda May but he knew that he respected that stare.

“You know, the rules of mini golf clearly state that there's a maximum of six strokes,” Jemma informed him, glaring down at her bright blue golf ball like it had personally offended her. “We could have admitted defeat by the loop-de-loop ages ago.”

“It doesn't seem like you admit defeat that easily. Not around Fitz,” Mack said carefully.

“Well, someone needs to tell him that he's wrong once in a while. Especially since he usually is.” Jemma halfheartedly tapped at her ball. It rolled another three feet, then stopped.

“Amen to that. Fitz is, um,” Mack paused. “He seems pretty happy because of you. Even with all the arguing, and trust me, guy doesn't like to be told that he's wrong.”

“We're friends,” Jemma said, finally giving up and tossing her golf ball into the hole. “Really good friends. Maybe even best friends.”

“Just friends?” Mack asked bluntly.

“This isn't _When Harry Met Sally_ , you know. Men and women are allowed to be friends,” she said quickly. Maybe too quickly. “Anyway, I have a boyfriend and Fitz is...I don't think he's even ready to try _starting_ a relationship with anyone. I tried to set him up with one or two of my friends and he just refused. Flat-out.”

“He tell you what happened?”

“No. Will you?” Jemma stared at Mack intently, even if she had to crane her neck up to do it. “I'm his friend and I want to help him, I swear. But I can't if I don't know what happened.”

“All right,” Mack sighed. It might be a good idea to tell her after all, he reasoned. Show her what could happen if she hurt Fitz like Raina had, warn her to be careful. “Fitz dated the same girl for about four or five years, starting around junior year of college. They were pretty serious, living together and everything. Then she had a pregnancy scare and she told him that she didn't know whose it was. The other guy? Skye's ex-boyfriend.”


	6. Bad Blood (Raina, June)

_Tall Cypress Yoga Retreat—Clear Your Mind, Clear Your Life, and Find New Meaning in a Luxurious Environment. Led by noted instructor and spiritual guide Raina, one of Zen Magazine's Top Ten Gurus to Watch._

If she hadn't reached a new plane of enlightenment, Raina would think this was awkward. But instead she was going to take this as a learning experience, an opportunity to further enhance her zen, to turn into a parable for her yoga students, to—she didn't want to deal with the inevitable mess of awkwardness and emotions (his, hopefully not hers) that apologizing to her ex-boyfriend would entail and absolutely no amount of yoga breathing and brown rice was going to change that.

It wasn't that she didn't feel sorry about it. She did. Or at least the nagging little voice with a conscience in the back of her head, the one that was occasionally able to inspire a sort of vague guilt (a lot of guilt, in her weaker moments) when she remembered all the elaborate machinations involved in cheating on Fitz, did. That part of her felt really, really, almost alarmingly sorry about it. Another part of her, the part that liked seeing just how far her smile could push someone, was actually rather proud of just how elaborate they had been. Either way, she just wanted to send him a bouquet of flowers and a nice apology note instead of having to actually see him in person. Because if she saw him in person, there would probably be shouting and accusations and possibly tears and all sorts of unpleasant things. Ex-boyfriends were so much easier to handle when she'd been the one to end it, a clean break instead of a messy blowout, no one to really blame.

She had regrets occasionally, Raina admitted. Days when she remembered Fitz making breakfast for her in the morning and frowning down at the bacon with intense concentration, or talking about his latest project, so excited that his hair stood straight up. She knew that it had been good, great even, in the first fleeting days of their relationship when everything had been exciting and new and had carried the promise of being something _different_. But it hadn't been enough. She'd gotten scared, unwilling to let anyone else have that kind of emotional leverage over her, and then she'd gotten bored to stop being scared and Grant Ward had had lots of emotional problems, but nice cheekbones. So that was that. Raina'd made peace with that part of herself a long time ago and for the moment, she was the one in control, just how she liked it. As it turned out, some people would actually pay you money to mess around with their heads. Lots of it.

When she finally called Fitz, he sounded...happy. Then he heard her voice. “Don't hang up, Fitz,” she said quickly. “I swear I wouldn't have called you if it wasn't important.”

“I didn't think I warranted anything important anymore. If I ever did,” Fitz snapped. “I just...I don't need this, Raina, you screwing around with me again.”

“I wanted to apologize. Properly.” When he'd found out, there'd been too much shouting, and then too much crying, for Raina to even slip in an apology, for her to somehow even the scales between them and clear what was left of her conscience. “I think that I owe you that much.”

“Fine. Apology accepted. Goodbye, Raina.”

“In person. I really am sorry, Fitz.” Raina infused her voice with as much sincerity as she possibly could and hoped that he wouldn't hang up. “I promise I won't take too much of your time. Five minutes, maximum, and then you never have to see me again.”

“Why do you even want to apologize?” he demanded.

“I've got really bad karma,” she offered. Honestly, she didn't even want to think what kind of awful creature she could get reincarnated into in the next life if she didn't make amends. Maybe a hedgehog. That little voice in the back of her head really had been getting awfully loud lately and if apologizing to Fitz was what it took to make it shut up, she'd do it in a heartbeat. “But honestly, it's been, ah, it's been weighing on my conscience.” The words sounded a little strange when she said them out loud.

“Your conscience? All right,” Fitz sighed heavily. “Tomorrow, around 5:30. There's a Starbucks near my apartment. I'll send you the address. But five minutes, max.”

She was early. Fitz wasn't. When he saw her sitting at the table in Starbucks, he stopped in the doorway, like he was reconsidering whether to go in at all. Then he gulped in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and marched forward. Raina remembered the look, the same one he'd had before every one of her sort-of friend Jiaying's parties, and thought that this was quite possibly the strangest thing about seeing an ex again, the realization that she had held on to so many things about him that simply wasn't hers to know anymore. The looks, the breaths, the different gradations of his accent, the way that unhappiness wrote itself across his face and the way she'd put it there. She hadn't even remembered it all voluntarily, in fact. It had just drifted in to the back of her brain and taken up residence there. And now here they were, both stuck with all the things they couldn't know anymore.

“Hello, Fitz,” Raina said formally. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, thank you.” He took a seat, one hand tapping against his knee, and carefully fixed his eyes about two feet above her head. “What about you?”

“I'm well. I just wanted to...I wanted to...I wanted to apologize for the way things ended between us.” That hadn't been terrible, had it? But Fitz just kept on looking two feet above her head and she realized that he expected _more_. “We weren't meant to last, but that was absolutely no excuse for my behavior. I hurt you, and I'm sorry for that. I could have handled the situation with more...tact and delicacy and I do regret the way that things ended between us.”

“Weren't meant to last?” Fitz took another deep breath, his voice cracking on the last word of his sentence. “You know, you were always playing games with me, messing with my head even when things were good between us. I--I think that's what you liked most about me. And that's not—I think for once, I can admit that you're right.” 

“I didn't want us to end like that, though,” she added. She'd used to pride herself on her clean and tactful breakups, the kind that left both parties free, clear, and unhurt. “I didn't—I wasn't in love with him. You should know that.”

“Kind of makes it worse, doesn't it?” Fitz shrugged.

“Maybe. I am sorry, Fitz,” she said again. That made it at least three times now. Possibly a new record.

“I know. Doesn't change anything, but I know.” He slid one hand across the table to touch hers briefly, and then pulled it back before she could even register the sensation.

“I should go, shouldn't I?”

“Yes, you should.” He finally looked her in the eyes then and strangely enough, she didn't see any trace of his former nerves then. “Goodbye, Raina.”

“Goodbye, Fitz.” Raina walked out without looking back, and she knew that he wouldn't have wanted her to. She'd let go of the last little piece of them a long time ago and just maybe, she thought that he had too.


	7. The Long and Winding Road (May, July)

_“Hello? Ms. May? You were listed as the emergency contact for Leopold Fitz.”_  
All her life, Melinda May had been the kind of person who got the phone call when things got bad, usually because she was the only person who knew how to fix them. But tonight, there she was, perched on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room outside surgery and looking down at her phone as she wondered who she had to call next, and for the first time in her life, Melinda May had no idea where to start.

Jemma burst in through the door before May had finished dialing Mack's number, coat thrown on over her plaid pajamas and tears streaking down her face, and May felt her heart crack a little at the look on Jemma's face. She'd called Jemma first because she'd known that the younger woman would want to be the first to know, but still—it should have been Phil delivering this kind of news. Or Skye. Anyone else who would have been better at sharing in Jemma's grief. “Where is he?” she demanded. “Can I see him?”

“He's still in surgery, Jemma,” May told her. “We might not be able to see him immediately after he gets out, but they'll let us in as soon as possible, I promise. I'll make sure of it.”

“But he's going to be all right?” Jemma had wrapped her arms around himself like she could hold herself together with that alone, pacing back and forth across the waiting room as she talked to May. “He has to be all right.”

“He's alive and he's going to stay that way.” Even if May had to march in there and perform surgery herself. She wasn't as close with Fitz as Phil was, who'd bonded with Fitz the first moment Fitz had shown him a design for a new way to support the ridiculous Juliet balcony Tony Stark had requested when designing his first vacation home, but when she'd gotten the phone call in the middle of the night, she'd been strangely furious. Furious that something like this could happen to someone so young, furious that life liked to throw misery after misery at the people who shouldn't have to handle it. So she'd decided that she would wait for as long as it took, fight as hard as she could for Fitz to be okay, carry the burden of it when everyone else couldn't. Because that was simply what Melinda May did. “The doctors will let us know more after the surgery's over.”

“Okay—do they know when that'll be?” Jemma asked anxiously. May watched the way that she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, still pacing, how her knuckles were white where they wrapped around each other and worried that Jemma would have exhausted herself by the time the doctors let them in to see Fitz.

“At least another hour. You should sit down, Jemma,” May said, as gently as she could. “Phil will be here in about fifteen minutes—he's bringing food and driving Skye and Hunter over. I was going to call Bobbi too, if you wanted her to be here?”

“Please.” Jemma shot her a grateful look. “Thank you for calling me first. And for being here—I wouldn't have wanted to be by myself here.”

“No one does.” May indicated the couch beside her and Jemma finally took a seat, curling into a corner and tucking her feet underneath her. _She's just a kid_ , May thought, watching how Jemma curled into herself and sipped at the cup of weak tea May had brought her from the cafeteria.

“You've very...very steady. Very calm in all of this. Thank you for that too,” Jemma whispered eventually as she crumpled the now-empty paper cup between her hands. She couldn't seem to stay still, eyes constantly flicking over to the double doors that led to surgery, and May didn't blame her: time always seemed to pass more slowly in hospital waiting rooms, each minute stretching itself out into an hour.

“I've spent a lot of time in hospitals,” she admitted. She wasn't sure why she did it: not many people knew what had happened besides Phil and Andrew (and her mother, who'd come to get her from the hospital at the end of that last day). She didn't want or need anyone's sympathy and telling Jemma now certainly wasn't that. An attempt to show the younger girl that she understood, maybe, a promise that she'd help Jemma and Fitz get through whatever came after the accident. “It was my daughter,” May said, in response to Jemma's unsaid question. “Leukemia. She was ten.”

“I'm so sorry,” Jemma breathed and leaned forward to lay her hand over May's. “How did you—how _do_ you cope?”

“You cope because you don't have any other choice. You remember the good, and make peace with the bad.” May said carefully, weighing each word before she said it. “But you don't have to do that, Jemma. Fitz is going to live. It's going to be okay.”

“I know that. Thank God, I know that.” Jemma completely crushed the cup between her hands with that. “But when you called me and told me that Fitz had been in an accident, it felt like the floor had given way beneath me. Like gravity was collapsing in on itself. And it terrified me, the idea of having to live without him. And then you told me that he was going to make it and I was so relieved, but so scared too, that the idea of losing someone could make me feel like that. That Fitz had so much of me.”

“You two aren't...” May trailed off, letting Jemma fill in the blanks. If she had to guess, she'd say that Fitz and Jemma weren't anything more than friends. Not yet. But she'd been wrong before.

“No. Just friends. Best friends,” Jemma added. “But there are days when I've...when I've wondered if Fitz and I could be more than--”

That was when Phil, trailed by Skye, Hunter, and Bobbi and carrying what looked like half the contents of his fridge, burst in through the doors of the waiting room and the rest of Jemma's sentence got lost in the ensuing chaos. Skye ran right to Jemma, throwing her arms around her, and only letting go for Bobbi to hug Jemma too, letting Jemma's tears get all over her sweater. Phil quietly crossed to sit beside May, reaching over to squeeze her hand. He'd sat with her in the hospital, all those years ago. “How are the kids doing?” he whispered.

“I think they'll be all right.” They had each other, May thought, and that was all anyone could ask for.

Half an hour later, a curly-haired woman in blue scrubs emerged from the surgery wing and everyone went silent. “Mr. Fitz is out of surgery and doing well,” she announced. “I'm Dr. Granger, the surgical intern on his case, and I just wanted to let you all know as soon as possible. He'll have to do extensive physical therapy for his arm, of course, and we're waiting to see how the lack of oxygen will have affected his brain—we suspect that it'll cause some problems with his speech, but hopefully nothing major.” Everyone exhaled then, a great collective rush of breath. “He's doing very well, considering how long his car was under water after it went off the bridge, and we should be able to let you see him when he wakes up. That'll be in a few hours, probably.”

“Thank you,” Jemma breathed and actually sprang up to hug Doctor Granger. “Thank you so much.” The doctor actually swayed on her feet with the force of Jemma's hug, but then she was grinning at her, already answering Jemma's stream of medical questions, and May let herself breathe too.

They waited out the next few hours with Doctor Granger, who let them into the nurses' station to watch a few episodes of terrible TV and patiently answered all of their questions over and over again, and eventually with Doctor Granger's boyfriend, a man with white-blond hair who showed up with gourmet scones and fresh-pressed coffee and who let her fall asleep on his perfectly pressed suit jacket for fifteen minutes, and then finally with what seemed like half the hospital's staff.

When Fitz finally woke up, they all agreed to let Jemma see him first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The posting schedule for this week will be a little different, since I'll be out of town for most of it, but the next chapter will probably go up tomorrow (Wednesday) and the chapter after that will be up on Sunday when I get back.


	8. Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow (Darcy, August)

_Snapchat, sent from the_lew to doctorjanefoster August 16 11:03 am: Darcy, pouting at the camera, wearing a flannel shirt and her black barista apron. Caption—Jane, you traitor._  
_Snapchat, sent from doctorjanefoster to the_lew, August 16, 11:05am: Blurry selfie of Thor and Jane on top of a glacier. Caption—Thor says hi._  
_Snapchat, from the_lew to doctorjanefoster, August 16, 11:06am: Darcy, eyebrows raised. Caption—can you send me one of his abs? Winky face emoji._

There was no reply from Jane and eventually Darcy sighed and shoved her phone under the counter. Time to get back to making single-cup, fair-trade, slow-brewed coffee and selling apple cardamon scones to hipsters. Normally she would have been at Jane's lab for the summer, doing the “I don't know anything about science but I'm still totally a kick-ass intern because I have a never-ending supply of Pop Tarts” thing, but Jane was off doing research in Norway with her giant blond hunk of a boyfriend. Research, Darcy's ass. Jane's last Snapchat yesterday had been from a hot tub under the stars.

She was happy for Jane, of course—if anyone deserved a vacation, it was her—but she still missed her friend more than pumpkin spice lattes. (Like, seriously—it wouldn't kill Starbucks to just have them year-round.) Especially since Jane was missing out on all the gossip about the single best part of working in hipster hell, aka the cutesy cafe that was paying half Darcy's rent for the summer: the couple betting pool. Every year, all the employees chose the two customers they thought made the best couple, whether or not they were together, and whoever's couple was deemed the cutest won eternal fame and glory, plus whatever money everyone had managed to scrounge together. Bonus points if the couple actually got together over the course of the year. Darcy had come _this close_ to winning last year, but then been defeated by a fucking _marriage proposal_. There had been balloons and flowers and “will you marry me” spelled out in cookies and watching it happen as Loki smirked next to her had tasted like bitter, bitter defeat. Thor may have been the human equivalent of a golden retriever, but his younger brother was more like one of those cats that plotted to kill their owners in their sleep.

But this year, she had it in the bag. She'd picked the two Brits—okay, technically one was Scottish—the minute that they'd first walked in and they were so damn adorable together, without even dating, that the rules of the universe practically decreed she had to win. They were in the shop again today, chai latte for her and Earl Grey for him, prosciutto buffalo mozzarella sandwiches and giant cookies for both of them, tucked away at a corner table just out of earshot. Maybe if she just wandered over and pretended to clean some of the tables off, they wouldn't notice her listening in. Years of trying to pull off practical jokes on her older siblings had given her some serious ninja skills. Darcy hummed to herself as she swept crumbs off and stacked dirty plates on top of each other, one ear open to try and hear what they were talking about and if she just got a little closer...there!

“You did really well today,” the girl—Jemma, Darcy remembered—said and leaned across the table to briefly rest a hand on his shoulder. “The doctor said that your range of motion is already up from last week.”

“Not well enough, though,” he mumbled, not looking at her.

“You can't beat yourself up about something like this, Fitz,” she said firmly. “Everyone progresses at a different pace and you're already doing better than the average patient. I looked up statistics, you know, and--”

“Just stop, Jemma,” he sighed. “Statistics don't make any—any difference, do they?”

“You're almost there,” the girl insisted. “I promise. I'm here for you, Fitz, whatever you need.” Peering around the side of the table, Darcy noticed that the guy's hand was shaking fiercely, even as he moved his other hand over to massage it.

“I know. But you...you shouldn't,” his voice dropped lower and Darcy inched closer. He was definitely getting his next cup of tea on the house, she decided. “You don't have to waste your time on me, Jemma—going to my-my physical therapy, doing all the ex—exercises with me, driving me places because I still haven't bought a new fucking car, I don't even want to look for one, I--” He stopped abruptly and sighed, clearly frustrated while she covered both of his hands with her own and leaned even closer. Darcy just wanted to wrap both of them in a warm blanket and keep them away from any kind of danger for the rest of their lives.

“You are not a waste of time,” the girl hissed. “Don't ever think that. Don't ever, ever think that I don't want to be here. With you.”

“Yeah, but you deserve better. You deserve time that's just yours. To not spend every hour of your free time trying to fix something that's broken,” he told her, still not meeting her eyes. Okay. Deeply personal shit going on. Time for Darcy to flee back behind the cash register and remind herself that other people's business was definitely not hers, no matter how much she wanted to give them both a hug.

She had a pair of customers to serve anyway: a guy with rumpled hair and an even more rumpled shirt and a pretty dark-haired girl wearing a perfectly coordinated outfit and a huge smile as she teased him about “finding the only place that's more hipster than Brooklyn, Humphrey”. But Darcy's eyes kept on flicking over to the couple in the corner, still talking quietly, for the rest of her shift and finally she gave in, marched over, and offered them both free tea refills. “You're frequent customers and we're almost out of Earl Grey anyway,” she said when the girl protested. “It's a foggy day, keep warm.”

“You look so familiar,” the girl said, peering up at her. “Are you—wait--do you know Doctor Jane Foster?”

“I'm her friend. Intern too, when the budget let her have one. Intern first, then friend,” Darcy clarified. “Once she witnessed my amazing highlighter and taser skills in action. Jane's great.”

“I saw her speak at a conference once--she's amazing,” the girl breathed. “Her research on the possibility of interplanetary forms of travel is simply groundbreaking. Fitz and I stayed up all night reading it when it first came out.”

“Do you want her email?” Darcy offered. She had a feeling that Jane and this girl could probably talk about science until they both went hoarse. And then invent a way to communicate telepathically and keep on talking.

“Really? That would be wonderful. Jemma Simmons.” She held out her hand and Darcy took it, noticing the way that the guy looked over at Jemma when he thought no one was watching. The same kind of fascination that Jane had when she looked through a telescope, or Steve when he watched Natasha dance, or, sometimes if she was fast enough, the same thing she saw when she caught Bucky watching her.

“Darcy Lewis.” She scribbled down Jane's email on a spare piece of paper and pressed it into the other girl's hand. “I work Saturday through Tuesday, if you guys want to avoid the weak-ass tea that the other barista makes.” She had to dash back to the counter then again, to serve some tech guy jabbering away on his phone, but she sent a huge smile and wave Jemma and Fitz's way. They waved back. God, even when they were arguing, they were adorable. 

They were still there when her shift ended an hour and a half later and Bucky rapped on the glass of the cafe's huge front window to pick her up. “Two minutes,” Darcy mouthed at him and grabbed a bag full of pastries from under the counter. Employee benefits, what could she say? Besides, the first time that she'd brought some of the cafe's salted caramel donuts home, he'd taken a bite of one, called her a goddess, picked her up, carried her upstairs to their bedroom, and gone down on her for like thirty minutes. The coffee she'd brought back had gone stone cold by the time they were done and she hadn't cared at all. 

More importantly, she knew that Bucky probably--definitely-- didn't want to come inside. He was a army vet, a survivor of the operation that had saved half of New York City, made his best friend Steve into a national hero, and nearly lost him his arm. (He'd gotten so many medals, Darcy could have melted them all down and made some kickass candlesticks—she'd promised to do that any time he wanted, on the nights when he couldn't stand to look at any reminders of that day.) The cafe was loud and crowded and small and basically trigger city. She'd learned to pick up on all of his triggers early on and when he asked her, worried but refusing to show it, if she minded not going out tonight, she'd just kiss him and say that the best part of staying in was getting to see him shirtless on a permanent basis. If he wanted to talk, they'd talk. If he wanted to not talk, they'd do that too. Simple as that. 

“Hi, doll,” he said, when she finally emerged, and kissed her just long and deep enough to mildly scandalize the patrons inside the cafe, tongue briefly skimming over hers as he sucked gently on her bottom lip, one hand molded around the curve of her waist and the other playing with one of her curls. A week or so after they'd gone on their first date, he'd snuck up behind her and tugged on her curls so they'd spring back into place, like a little kid on the playground, and she'd loved the sight of that grin on his face so much that she hadn't even the heart to tease him about it. Luckily, she'd moved way past that.

“Hi, you.” she grinned up at him, winding her hands in his shirt to keep him close and sighing happily. Darcy Lewis, big puddle of mushy goo after one kiss. She had to keep that quiet or her reputation would be a wreck. “Where's your better half?”

“Off wooing his ballerina. Trying to buy out half the florists in town, I think.” Bucky shook his head, laughing. “How was work?”

“Not bad.” Darcy shrugged. “I'm kind of worried about my couple, though. Something happened to him and they're—they're different now.”

“Different how?”

“He—he thinks he's broken,” Darcy said slowly, puzzling it out. “And she knows that he's just different but he won't believe her.”

“You know,” Bucky said thoughtfully, pulling her against his side. “I used to know a boy who thought he was broken beyond fixing and a girl who knew better. And they turned out just fine.”


	9. Here Comes the Sun (Trip, September)

_Reservation for September 10, 2015, 7:30 pm.  
Party of two, Antoine Triplett_

This was the most awkward date that Antoine Triplett had ever been on. By a lot. So much that he was starting to worry he'd seriously misjudged the situation and unknowingly asked Jemma Simmons out on the worst date of her life. 

He'd met her about a month ago, waiting in line at the Blue Barn around the corner, when they'd found out that they worked in buildings directly across from each other. She was pretty and smart and sweet and surprisingly easy to talk to when she remembered that he didn't even have one pHd. At least, once she relaxed a bit and forgot about all the different flirting techniques that Trip suspected she'd studied up on (he'd definitely spotted at least three back issues of Cosmo stuffed into her messenger bag). They had lunch every Thursday, they talked, they laughed, and eventually he'd asked her out for dinner, because why not—but really, he should have known that something was wrong when it took her a minute and a half to say yes.

They were only about fifteen minutes into dinner and Jemma had already dropped her fork, her wineglass, and half of the appetizer and then apologized about twenty times for it, even though he kept on telling her that she didn't have to. She kept on fidgeting around in her seat, winding a piece of hair around her finger so tightly that her finger turned white and checking her phone in what she clearly thought was a sneaky fashion. Trip didn't have the heart to tell her that he knew it was hidden in her lap: Jemma checked her phone like she was expecting something terrible to happen any minute. When she hadn't been apologizing, she'd been talking nonstop about her neighbor and best friend, a guy named Fitz who, admittedly, sounded pretty great. At least, from the way Jemma described him, it sounded like the guy was on the verge of single-handedly solving the world with one hand while serving as Jemma's handyman, Doctor Who watching companion, and all around life partner. Which raised the question of why, if Jemma was already involved with someone, or about as close as you could get without actually realizing you were, she'd agreed to go on a date with Trip. 

“Look,” Trip finally said, trying to keep his voice as gentle as possible. “Jemma, if you didn't want to go on a date with me, all you had to say was no. I wouldn't have been offended, girl. I swear.” 

“I did want to,” she said anxiously. “Or at least I wanted to want to.” That was when she promptly burst into tears. 

“Jemma. Hey, Jemma.” He slid out of his chair and went around the table to kneel in front of her. “Jemma, tell me what's wrong. I didn't know I was this bad of a date,” Trip joked, hoping to make her laugh. Jemma just sobbed some more. “Okay, forget I said that. Do you want me to drive you home? We can do that right now, if you want to. We can do whatever would make you feel better.”

“You're so nice,” Jemma wailed. “You're so _nice_ and we're supposed to be on a _date_.”

“Forget about the date. You're my friend and I want to help you,” he said firmly. Jemma looked so hopeful at that and really, there was nothing more for it but to pay the check and promise to drive Jemma back to her apartment. And tell her that none of it was her fault. Clearly, anything more than friendship wasn't going to work out between them: he'd had a bad feeling about it the moment that he'd picked Jemma up and she'd walked down the stairs like she was walking to an execution. And he was okay with that, more than he'd even expected himself to be. Sometimes things just didn't work out and in his experience it usually meant that something even better was just around the corner.

Antoine Triplett had had his life planned all out at seventeen. Valedictorian of his high school, then on to Princeton, then med school, sports surgeon by thirty. Then his dad was killed in Afghanistan, on his third tour of duty, halfway through Trip's freshman year at Princeton and he'd moved back home to take care of his mom. It had hurt like hell (still did, some days) but in the end moving back to DC had opened up a life that he'd never even thought about. He'd finished up his degree in DC instead, at Georgetown—wasn't like he had anything to complain about there—and that was where he'd met his cousin Sharon's fiance Sam, who worked in the VA. While Sam worked with the vets, Trip had started working with their kids and when he'd moved out west, he'd brought plans for a brand new charity along with him. He liked to think that his dad would be proud. Moral of the story: life rarely, if ever, worked out the way that you'd planned it. The best thing to do was just take it all as they happened.

He had a feeling that Jemma Simmons, double pHd and certified genius, had never really been good at taking things as they came. They were parked in front of her apartment now after a long silent drive back and she was trying to fix her makeup before she went in, peering into a tiny compact as she tried valiantly to stop sniffling. “It's okay,” he said again and hoped that she'd believe it this time. “We'll still get lunch and we'll hang out and we can file this one away in our pile of bad date stories. Promise.” 

“I promised him that I'd go out,” Jemma murmured, finally putting down her eyeliner and knotting her hands in her lap. “I can't let him see that I'm upset.”

“Does him mean Fitz?” Trip asked gently. When Jemma looked at him in surprise, he just shrugged. “You talked about him so much that I knew he had to be someone pretty important.”

“He told me that I should go out, have some time to myself. He says that I shouldn't be spending all my time trying to help him, that he needs to figure out how to do things by himself, but I think he really doesn't want me around,” Jemma whispered.

“Does he know that's what you think?” Trip said. Jemma just shook her head no. “You might want to try telling him that. Talk it out instead.” Because he had a feeling that the absolute last thing this Fitz guy wanted was for Jemma to leave.

“I'll try. Do you...do you want to come to a barbecue next weekend?” Jemma blurted out. “As a friend. We're doing this thing to celebrate the last weekend of good weather and we're a very welcoming bunch and you're very nice and...you should come along. No one really knows how to use the barbecue, so the barbecue isn't a guarantee, but Darcy has this great potato salad recipe and May will have probably brought some deli stuff along and we're friends now, I think—I really hope--”

“I'll be there,” Trip put in. “We're friends. Promise.”

A week later, he was incredibly glad that he'd kept his promise. First of all, because Jemma hadn't been lying when she said that no one knew how to use the barbecue and someone would have set something on fire if he hadn't been there. (Hunter was waving the lighter fluid around in a way that made Trip want to take all sharp and flammable objects away from him permanently.) Second of all, because he actually knew one of the other people there: Bucky, one of the vets that Sam had worked with. Third of all, because Bucky had dragged his best friend along with him and Trip could now say that he'd met the Steve Rogers, and that the Steve Rogers had a damn good sense of humor. Fourth (and most) of all, because Skye Johnson slammed into his life like a hurricane and he thought that all the something betters that had been waiting around the corner were nothing compared to her.

“Are those muscles real?” was the very first thing that Skye said to him and he just stared at her for a good three seconds before he remembered that he was supposed to be cool.

“Want to find out?” Fuck, that was a terrible line, he thought, and tried not to wince. But she flirted back anyway, grinning shamelessly up at him with those gorgeous eyes and teasing him about his gym routine once she coaxed him into revealing it. That was how he ended up giving her a piggyback ride around the beach, her laughing against his back and urging him to go into the water until they ended up splashing Steve's date, a gorgeous, poised prima ballerina named Natasha Romanov. For a moment, they both just stood there, terrified. Then she splashed them back.

Later, wrapped in a heavy towel and perched by the barbecue as Trip tried to simultaneously cook hamburgers and convince everyone else that no, it wasn't as easy as it looked, she teased him some more, drawing him out until he found himself spilling out half his life story to her. The good parts first, as she listened with her head tilted to one side and laughed at all the right places. “No twelve-year-old kid wants anything that's green,” she protested. “Especially if it's some kind of weird lumpy juice.”

“I loved spinach. Model kid,” Trip told her. “I even asked for second helpings at the table.”

“You did _not_ ,” she accused, laughing. “My favorite food when I was twelve was sour gummy worms. Still is. But then I was hardly a model kid. One time when I was sixteen, I hacked into my high school's system and sent out an email to everyone saying that school was canceled for the day.” He believed it. “With the way I grew up, I was destined to cause trouble. Foster care,” she added before he could ask the question. “I bounced around from family to family until I turned eighteen—no one really wanted me to stay.”

“I can't imagine anyone not wanting you,” he blurted out, quick, and then wondered if it'd been too much too soon. But she just looked at him with wide eyes and a wider smile, like a kid who'd been told they were going to Disneyland, and accused him of being a smooth talker. The smile stayed on her face though, just for looking at him, and he felt like they had the best kind of secret together.

Talking to her was so easy, so natural, like his sentences had always been meant to follow hers, that for a moment Trip felt almost guilty about it. However much he'd liked talking to Jemma, it had never been quite like this and he looked over to her while Skye was in search of pickles. Jemma just nodded, smiled, and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like “You guys are cute” and gone back to talking to Fitz. Trip had only met the other man for about a minute, before Fitz gravitated back to Jemma's side, but things seemed like they were...better between the two friends. Jemma didn't watch Fitz too anxiously as he floated around the barbecue and when she rested her hand on top of Fitz's, he let her. “You ship it too?” Skye asked as she returned with the pickle jar.

“I...ship it?”

“Oh, you have so much to learn...” Skye laughed, kind of maniacally. Trip thought that it was cute.

“As long as you're the one teaching me.” Lately, he realized just how right she was—as long as she was there, he'd sit through anything. Long conferences on her laptop with other Google coders while Trip tried to fix her couch and finally admitted that he'd need Fitz to come over and look at the IKEA instructions, weird science-fiction movies with that one British actor whose name he always forgot in a shiny silver suit and drinking games based on the same weird science-fiction movie, three hours of searching through bookshops to find the one specific edition of the first Simon Snow book for his oldest niece, Skye trying to hack into a laser-light display when pop queen Maria Hill's tour came to town, that one weird hole-in-the-wall taqueria in the Mission that probably violated health standards but that Skye loved anyway...whatever it was, he'd give it a chance. Because it was her and it was him and together they made sense like nothing else.


	10. I Can Do Better than That (Bobbi, October)

_Spotted this dog at the shelter today. Look at those big puppy eyes. And he's up for adoption. Just saying._  
**The lease won't let us have a dog, Clint.**  
_You're a lawyer. Can't you do lawyerly shit to the lease?_  
**Only if you let me pick out the dog with you. And if we don't name it Pizza Dog.**  
_See! Lawyerly negotiation skills, right there. I told you that I love you today, right?_  
**Twice already. I love you too.**

“So you don't think it's weird at all. The guy you used to date dating one of your closest friends,” Bobbi said bluntly and gave Jemma the interrogatory stare that had earned her the best conviction record in Northern California. Unfortunately, it looked slightly less intimidating with a forkful of French toast. She and Jemma were at their regular brunch spot, a soul food place that always had a line out the door but also had the best French toast with butter pecan sauce and watermelon sweet tea in town. Besides, she'd worked a case pro bono for the owner so a corner table was hers whenever she wanted it.

“ We didn't actually date--we went on one date. Which was pretty terrible. Half a date, since we left halfway through the appetizers. I'm not sure that it should even count as a date,” Jemma added thoughtfully around a mouthful of beignet. 

“But it was meant to be a date, wasn't it?” Bobbi pressed. Jemma just took another bite of beignet and shrugged in response. Clever diversion tactic, but she'd get the truth out of her friend eventually. She _knew_ Jemma Simmons, ever since they'd been partnered up in biology lab freshman year when everyone else had wimped out on dissecting the dead cat, and she also knew that Jemma Simmons liked to push everything way, way down and pretend that everything was perfectly okay. Until, of course, all of her anxieties and worries and tension bubbled to the surface, Jemma broke down, and it was manifestly clear that everything was as far from okay as it could possibly get. Jemma'd been all optimism and determination since Fitz's accident had happened, pages and pages of research on Fitz's condition in one hand and giant mug of tea in the other, blazing ahead without looking behind her, and so by Bobbi's reasoning, she was overdue for a break. And hopefully not a breakdown.

“I'm happy for him and Skye,” Jemma finally said. “They're really cute together and it...it doesn't bother me. Really,” she insisted when Bobbi shot her a doubtful look. “There never was anything between me and Trip to be bothered about.” Jemma went back to neatly cutting up her eggs Benedict (god forbid that one bite have less biscuit than the previous one) and smiled at Bobbi in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. Bobbi'd seen that same smile right around finals senior year, whenever one of Jemma's grant applications was due, and when Jemma had been on the verge of breaking up with her latest boyfriend: it was always just a little too toothpaste commercial to really convince her that Jemma had been sleeping enough/was not stressed, not even a little bit/not in need of serious retail therapy. But this time, the smile was a little less wide and reached a little further to Jemma's eyes and Bobbi thought that maybe for the first time in a while, Jemma believed in her smile too.

“You know that it's okay to not be okay, right? Not just about the Trip thing but about anything? And that you can talk to me about it if you want to.” If she weren't sitting on the other side of the table, she would have gotten up and given Jemma a hug. Fuck it, she was going to do that anyway. Jemma even hugged her back.

“I know. And I am,” Jemma promised, once Bobbi had stopped crushing her ribs with the hug. “At least, I'm on the way to being okay. Much better than I was even a month ago.”  
“What happened a month ago?”

“I burst out crying in the middle of my half-a-date,” Jemma admitted. “So you can stop watching me for signs of imminent collapse now. Emotional fourth act revelation, check.” Bobbi wouldn't have put it past her to have a checklist of emotional milestones.

“I was not,” Bobbi denied, face perfectly still and innocent.

“You were. And I did appreciate it.” 

“Wait...” Jemma's words from earlier sank in and Bobbi leaned forward across the table. Time to bring out interrogatory look number two. “When you said emotional fourth act revelation, what did  
you mean?”

“It's just...it's a thing. It may not even be a _thing_ thing—I haven't—I mean, I've barely even thought about it. Much less overthought it.” Jemma laughed. “It's a—a possibility. A potential future.”

“And I assume you're not going to tell anyone what this potential future is?” Though Bobbi already had her own suspicions about it.

“Not yet.” Jemma sipped her tea, then glanced up with a mischievous look in her eyes. “You know, you haven't told me about a single case you've won this month. Or about any of the dogs that Clint's tried to adopt and I refuse to believe that he's given up.” It was a blatant distraction tactic and Bobbi accepted it. Because she did like talking about Clint, and the obstacle course he'd set up in their backyard as training for the next Olympics (“that Russian guy is going down, Bobbi”), and his conviction that mac and cheese was a legitimate pizza topping, and his three-step plan for teaching her sign language (swearing first). Relationships had never been her forte but they'd never been Clint's either and together, they were figuring out how to make it work. With or without a dog.

“We are going to see this band tonight with Steve and Natasha—it's called the Exes, I think? A guy and a girl. Not actually exes anymore, apparently but I mean, anyone could have told you that. I watched some of their videos after Clint got the tickets,” Bobbi explained. “And the sexual tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Do you want to come along?”

“It sounds like a couple-y kind of thing.”

“So just bring Fitz.” Bobbi shrugged. Jemma went bright pink. “You guys can do the lurking in a corner and scaring other people with finishing each other's sentences thing.” Bobbi had actually seen them do it for the first time since the accident about a week and a half ago. They'd been at Saturday dim sum (where she'd been perfectly nice to Hunter, thank you very much) and Jemma and Fitz had singlehandedly taken over the table's orders when the first dumpling cart had rolled by. Everyone else had just barely resisted the urge to applaud. She was pretty sure that Skye had managed to kick both Hunter and Mack, who'd flown out to check up on Fitz again, under the table at the same time.

“I don't know how he does with small spaces,” Jemma said anxiously. “Or crowds.”

“There's tables and stuff. I'm pretty sure there's even food,” Bobbi told her. “That'll make Fitz happy. Look, Jemma...I just want to see you have a good night out. Listen to music, catch up with friends, eat some cheese fries. Or I'll have to face Callie's wrath again and I just got out of sending her the progress reports,” she teased.

“I trained her well, didn't I?” Jemma said smugly. “All right, I'll go. Just for a little while. And if I can talk Fitz into it, I'll bring him along too.”

Bobbi didn't even mention that as far as she could tell, Jemma could talk Fitz into anything. People had to come to things on their own sometimes and Jemma was a scientist: she'd never believe anything without double and triple checking the evidence, until she'd seen it with her own eyes too many times to count. And when Jemma finally did, Bobbi wouldn't even say that she'd told her so.


	11. Here Comes the Anxiety (Fitz, November)

_“You've reached Doctor Fitz—it sounds more professional with just my last name, Jemma, I swear. I'm not available right now but if you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Unless you're Jemma Simmons, in which case I will always pick up the bloody phone, because she is a caring and nurturing—Jemma, I'm not reading this entire thing. Ow!”_

_“Leopold? It's your mum. I just wanted to check that you got the jumper I sent you—it gets cold in California too, you know. Just the other day, I read about a young couple who got a terrible case of hypothermia in the mountains and nearly froze to death. So I knit a jumper for Jemma too. I included some mince pies in the package too. You were looking awfully skinny the last time we talked on the Skype, love, and--”_

Fitz hit the stop button on his answering machine, cutting off his mum's voice before she could start lecturing him about getting more leafy greens in his diet, sighed, and scrubbed a hand across his face. The last thing he needed was any more fucking advice. Everyone seemed to have gotten into the habit of giving him advice more lately and every last piece of advice seemed to revolve around the same theme: “just tell her how you feel, Fitz”. Only he'd never been good at finding the right words before his accident and he was even worse now and, most of all, he was fairly sure that there simply weren't any words for the way he felt about her.

It was Thanksgiving and Leo Fitz was more grateful for Jemma Simmons than for anything else and oh god, he was never, ever going to tell her that. Because even if he did manage to tell her about the overwhelming, all-encompassing rush of _feelings_ that seemed to sweep over him every time he got within three feet of her, even if he did manage to stop tripping over his own words and force something out that didn't make him sound like a total idiot, she'd probably just stare at him blankly and tell him (very politely, of course) that it was very nice that he felt that way but unfortunately she didn't feel the same and wouldn't this all make a great story in ten years, when she was happily married to some dolt with a symmetrical face and he was growing old alone with ten cats? Fitz scowled in disgust. Could you actually become a cat man? He'd be the first, probably. And then they'd eat him.

“You're not going to become a cat man,” Skye said, when he called her. “You're allergic to cats anyway. Look, do you want to role play the situation with me over the phone? Because I'm the best best friend ever?”

“Wouldn't Trip think that was weird?” Fitz asked. Skye's new-ish state of relationship bliss had clearly made her delusional. And hopelessly optimistic.

“We support you, Fitz! Go get her!” Trip shouted. Skye must have put her phone on speaker and now Skye, Trip, and probably her neighbors on either side could hear all about Fitz's romantic failures. Skye's walls were thin enough that she'd had to buy her neighbors noise-canceling headphones when she started dating Trip. “I believe in you, my man!” Trip added. 

“If I ever managed to say—to say anything, which is saying a lot anyway, since I can barely talk now...” Fitz had gotten a lot better since those first days after the accident, when he had choked on each and every word and asking for a cup of water had been a victory, but when it came to Jemma, his words always seemed to vanish into thin air. “But if I did, she would say no.”

“You never know until you try,” Skye chirped. 

“No, if you're me, you kind of do. Why do you care so much anyway?” Fitz could hear the petulant note in his own voice as his voice went up at the end of the question and almost hated himself for it.

“Because you and Jemma are my friends and I want to see both of you be happy,” Skye said stubbornly. “And I think that you'd both be happier together. We've all been watching you pine for like, almost a year now, and it was--”

“Skye, I have to go,” he interrupted. “I'm supposed to help Jemma pick up the turkey in a few minutes.” Normally, Thanksgiving dinner would have been at Coulson and Audrey's house but they were in the middle of a house renovation that was supposed to have finished three months go and Jemma had volunteered her and Fitz's apartments as an alternative. As long as they kept Jemma far, far away from the oven, everything would be fine. He was under strict orders to keep her distracted with cranberry mimosas and decorations on the day of.

“Give her my love! And yours too,” Skye added slyly.

“Bye, Skye.” Fitz said and pressed the end call button as aggressively as he could. Skye meant well, he knew she did, but she just didn't understand the way that things were between him and Jemma. Because they were best friends, yes, but they'd only just figured out how to be that again in the awkward months after his accident and the thought of anything more was beyond his wildest dreams. Not that he hadn't dreamed about it, because he had. Every night. Beyond any realistic dream, then, Fitz corrected himself. Because she was _Jemma_ , with all the marvels that that meant, beautiful and smart and strong and kind, and he was just him, and a little less brilliant than the him that he'd been before.

And there she was, practically glowing in his doorway, coat belted around her waist and hair dripping water on his carpet from the November rain. (He didn't care.) “Fitz,” she said, bouncing on the tips of her toes and spinning her car keys around one finger. “Come on! I finally found some cranberries at Whole Foods and you can buy them in bulk.” 

“Why do we need cranberries in bulk?”

“So we can make cranberry sauce, of course!” Jemma crossed to where he was standing and wrapped her hand firmly around his wrist, tugging him towards the door. Fitz felt warmth spread throughout his entire body from where she was touching him and tried very hard not to blush.

“We're not even American, remember? Besides, May made me promise to not let you cook. Do you want me to face her wrath?” Fitz tried to give her his best puppy-dog eyes but he suspected that he just looked kind of terrified. 

“So then somebody else'll make it. I'm sure Darcy has a recipe somewhere,” Jemma said blithely. “It'll be fun, Fitz! Anyway, I need you to help me get the turkey from the store. I did some research online and a solid majority of cooking blogs said to allow one pound per person, unless it's over twelve pounds, in which case it should be a quarter pound but we've definitely got over twelve people coming, especially if Lance brings a date—I have a very nice single friend if he doesn't—and of course we'll want to have leftovers--”

“Jemma, how heavy is this turkey?”

“Twenty pounds,” she blurted out. “But if we take everything else out of one of our fridges, it should fit. And I was only thinking about getting five pounds or so of cranberries. Mack really likes cranberry sauce,” she protested when Fitz's jaw dropped open.

“One pound,” he countered.

“Three,” she said and gave him her best puppy dog eyes. They weren't very good (she batted her eyelashes like she had a gigantic piece of charcoal stuck in her eye and the way she bit at her lower lip inspired all kinds of unclean thoughts that involved her not getting her way) but he gave in to her anyway. Because he always would.

“All right, three. But we're letting Darcy make the sauce, deal?” he sighed.

“Deal.”

Darcy did end up making the cranberry sauce. And the mashed potatoes. And the four different kinds of pie and was basically an angel sent down from Thanksgiving dinner heaven. Especially because she had given Jemma, Jane, and Skye a tray full of cranberry mimosas and a huge stack of construction paper to make paper hand turkeys from, and kept them on the other side of the room from any and all cooking implements. Even if she shooed Fitz away too when he tried to offer her a new and improved meat thermometer.

“Fitz, there's a 50/50 chance that that thing is going to blow up in my face,” Darcy said firmly, one hand propped on her hip, the other holding a giant whisk. “Don't pull a Tony Stark and invent weird shit that could rain destruction down upon us all. Go moon over Jemma instead.” Fitz was about to protest that he didn't _moon_ over Jemma when Darcy actually shoved him in Jemma's direction and he went reeling into the land of paper hand turkeys.

“Fiiiitz...” Jemma sang, grabbing for his hand and pulling him down on the carpet beside her. Fitz told himself that he was not going to even think about looking at her legs in the high-heeled boots and red velvet miniskirt that Skye must have talked her into, then realized that he already had and seriously contemplated beating his head against the table until he was able to just stop. Because it wasn't fair to Jemma, the best friend he'd ever had, to think about her like that, to want something that they'd never even talked about wanting. Even if he suspected that he'd wanted it from the first time that he'd met her. “Fitz, are you all right?” she asked and he realized that he'd gone silent.

“Yeah, I'm fine. What are we making?” he asked and let her lean against his side. Fitz could tell that she'd already had a few drinks: her face was flushed as she stared up at him, her voice was a few decibels louder than normal, and she'd progressed right into cuddly Jemma as she wrapped her arm around his waist and dropped her head onto his shoulder.

“We're making thankful lists!” she announced. “It was Audrey's idea and I already put you at the top of my list so now you need to put me on yours!”

“Okay, okay, I will,” he said, laughing, while she pressed paper and markers into his hands. “I always will, promise.” Jemma didn't notice, too busy pulling “the right colors” out, but Skye did and mouthed _smooth_ at him over Jemma's head. He just shook his head in response. It wasn't a line—Fitz wasn't sure he even knew how to pull off a line anymore. It was just the truth.

Later that night, after everyone else had left and he'd (mostly) managed to clean up, Jemma was still there curled up on his couch. And demanding pancakes. “This is one of only three things I can make,” she informed him. “Don't rob me of that glory.”

“I don't see you making any pancakes,” he teased back, pulling the flour and sugar out from under the counter. “Banana, chocolate chip, or both?”

“Like you need to ask. I am getting up,” Jemma declared after a while. “Eventually, I swear. For the second batch of pancakes at least.”

“It's fine,” he told her, smile tugging at the edge of his mouth as he watched her lift her head from the couch, crane her neck hopefully at the pancakes, and then promptly collapse back onto the couch. “I mean, you did heroically haul the, um—the turkey up all those stairs. Even if you stuck me with the cranberries.” Jemma giggled and Fitz's heart thumped erratically in his chest. Finally, he plated the pancakes and carried them over to her, jug of maple syrup tucked under one arm. (His hand didn't shake once as he poured it over the pancakes.)

“You're the hero,” she said happily as she attacked the pancakes. “You always have been.” He didn't say anything in response, just stuffed half a pancake into his mouth to keep himself from talking and bumped his shoulder against hers in a silent thanks. She fell asleep on his couch, blankets tucked around her and still clutching her plate, halfway through her third pancake. Sudden but inevitable betrayal, really. 

“Good night, Jemma,” he whispered, easing her arm off from where it had been flung across his stomach and slipping off the couch. “I, ah...” It couldn't hurt if he said it once, could it? She couldn't hear him, after all, sound asleep under a pile of blankets. Just to hear what it sounded like. “I love you.”


	12. All You Need is Love (She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah) (Jemma, December)

_To Do_  
_~~Buy Christmas presents (see subsection A)~~_  
_~~Get legendary cookie recipe from Darcy~~_  
_~~Buy necessary accoutrements to make aforementioned legendary cookie recipe~~_  
_~~Buy cookie party decorations~~_  
_~~Get someone who isn't Skye to make the mulled wine~~_  
_Tell Fitz_

Jemma Simmons prided herself on her to-do lists, and on checking every single item off in a timely and efficient fashion. And this holiday season, she'd bought an array of thoughtful and unique presents for her friends and family, bribed Darcy into giving her a collection of fail-safe cookie recipes, bought at least half the baking gear at the Sur la Table, and gotten Mack to promise that he would be in charge of the mulled wine. (If Skye tried to sneak extra alcohol in, he could just hold it above her head.) She'd even found the perfect vintage decorations from her favorite boutique, this little store called Roses and Wolves run by the cutest couple: a girl with long red hair the color of flames and a wardrobe composed almost entirely of pastels and a girl with intricately braided brown hair and the kind of keen business sense that ensured no one ever bought one thing when they could buy three.

As a result, Jemma's apartment was currently bursting with festive cheer. She'd even got Fitz to figure out a way to hang up all her Christmas lights without blowing a fuse. She'd been productive and cheery and she'd even made it through the mandatory holiday call with her parents without gritting her teeth so hard that she did serious damage to them. Then it had all come to a screeching halt.

Because right now she was elbow-deep in cookie dough that was simply refusing to cooperate, and people were due to come over in half an hour, and she still had no idea how to tell Fitz anything. Let alone everything. Jemma glared down at the dough like it had personally wronged her and poked it hard. It quivered. God, all she wanted was to toss the dough into the compost, pour herself a giant glass of mulled wine, curl up into a ball on her couch, rewatch _500 Days of Summer_ for the hundredth time, and feel appropriately jaded about romance. But she had at least fifteen people to host and one best friend to confess to and—Jemma screamed silently into the dough. 

“Jemma? Are you all right?” Fitz was peering around the edge of the door—they'd agreed that he would come over a half hour in advance to help set things up, she remembered. And at the sight of him, Jemma felt that inexplicable wave of warmth sweep through her, fizzing in her veins and making it nearly impossible for her to stop smiling. It was like everything suddenly got brighter and sharper once he arrived, like someone had removed a thin film between her and the world, and Jemma found herself achingly aware of every last inch between them. Twelve steps and she could have his arms wrapped around her, a tilt of her head up and she could be kissing him, another step and she'd be pressed flush against him, just a little more and she could wrap her legs around his waist...Jemma blushed fiercely and tried to clear her head. When had she started having these kinds of thoughts about Fitz? And when had she become unable to stop?

“Everything's fine,” she said brightly. “The cookie dough's not being very cooperative but we can get Darcy to work her magic on it. And if all else fails, the supermarket sells frozen cookie dough in bulk.” She held up a hand coated in eggy sticky mess by way of explanation. Fitz looked slightly nauseous.

“Right. Yeah, we're tossing that batch out,” he declared and marched over to pull the bowl out of her hands and scrape its contents into the compost bin. He always smelled so good, Jemma thought idly, like soap and nutmeg. Stupid pheromones. “We'll grab two sticks of butter and let them soften on the counter, and then we'll get you some mulled wine. And then--” Fitz caught sight of the mistletoe dangling above Jemma's doorway. “And then we're getting rid of that blasted plant.”

“I thought it was a nice holiday touch.” And just maybe, she'd been hoping to catch Fitz under it and have an excuse to give him the kind of kiss that would explain everything, that would render all her carefully planned (and sure to be awkward) words unnecessary.

“It's poisonous,” he grumbled. “Skye'll probably try to shove us under it, thinks she can pair us all off like the, uh—like, the—what are they?”

“The animals on Noah's ark?” Jemma offered. Fitz nodded vigorously in agreement. “You know,” she began and took a step towards where he was leaning against her kitchen counter, inspecting the giant pot of mulled wine. “If Skye, er, if she did do that, it might not be...I mean we could...it wouldn't be terrible.”

“I know. She could try to trap me underneath it with _Hunter_ ,” Fitz shuddered. Perhaps “not terrible” hadn't been the best choice of words.

“I mean, it's practically a ritual between friends,” Jemma blurted out. “Awkward meeting under the mistletoe, everyone watches and makes crude toasts...it's an integral part of the holiday season.”

“Integral part of the holiday season?” Fitz eyed her worriedly. “Jemma, are you all right? You, um, you kind of have a death grip on that spatula.” When she looked down, she realized that she had in fact been gripping the spatula so hard that her knuckles had turned white. Oh God. There was a reason that she had dropped her improv acting class two weeks into freshman year of college. If she had just prepared better, maybe made some flash cards for the event...if she just excused herself now, maybe she could go make them. “Jemma?” he said again.

“I'm fine!” she chirped and released her grip on the spatula. It clattered to the floor and then there was dead silence. She had to say something. Anything. It didn't matter what. “You know, we've never kissed. It could be quite...nice.” She took another step towards him and Fitz backed up until he hit her kitchen counter, having to grab for the edge of it to keep his balance.

“I...you...what are you doing? You, ah, you can't—please don't, Jemma.” Fitz was tapping one hand frantically against his hip now, the other still clutching the counter, and there was a plea in his eyes that she didn't understand. “I—I said it once and that was enough—that had to be and you can't say things like that now, it makes my mind spin in circles and I don't know what to say or do and I know that you like to tease me but not this please, Jemma. I can take anything but this.”

“I'm not teasing. I'm—I'm testing a hypothesis. Because I've been feeling the kinds of things that I didn't even know I could feel. These butterflies and this inexplicable warmth and just this, this insane _happiness_.” Jemma gestured with one hand between them and hoped against hope that their old telepathic connection would work and he'd pick up on what her vague hand gestures meant. Fitz just looked blankly at her. “It was strange and new and different and things that I'd never even thought I would think. Especially in the way I was thinking them. I mean, I didn't even know what it was so I collected the evidence and I did research and then I...I heard you, Fitz. At Thanksgiving.”

“Oh shit,” Fitz groaned. “I'm sorry. I'll just...I'll go now, okay? I never meant for you to hear it, because then we'd have to talk about it and you'd have to let me down gently and I just... I didn't want to make you do that, okay? I just want--I wanted to know what it would feel like.”

“Don't go!” Jemma shot forward and grabbed his wrist just as he turned to leave. “Please, just stay and listen.” They were very close now, and Fitz had gone a faint shade of red, and she could have sworn that she heard the faint thumping of his heartbeat, that it had somehow synched itself up to hers, because they were two halves of the same coin and two pieces of the whole and she hadn't even known that she was in love for very long, but it felt like somehow, she always had been. And suddenly she had no idea what she would do if he said that actually, he'd meant that he loved her in a platonic friend kind of way when he'd said it. “Please, just listen,” she repeated. Fitz nodded, slowly, and Jemma let go of his hand. “But yes, I've been collecting data—the way I am around you, the way you are around me—and I've tallied all my results and made graphs and I've thought and rethought this over a hundred times and I...” She trailed off, looking helplessly up at him and praying that he would know how to finish her sentences one last time.

“And what did—what did your results say, Doctor Simmons?” he prompted, staring down at her with something in his eyes that she thought might be hope.

“All the empirical evidence suggests that I'm madly in love with you.” The words seemed to echo off every surface in her apartment, ringing out over and over, and Fitz was just looking at her and looking at her.

“Really? You love me?” Fitz said slowly.

“Really really.” Jemma reached out to catch hold of his hand with hers, squeezing it tightly, and felt him tug her a little closer. “You know, this is traditionally the part where you, um, where you kiss me.”

“Really?” He was smiling now, full and bright, and his other hand had moved to curve around her waist.

“Really really,” she breathed. Jemma was the one to lean in first but Fitz was the one to deepen the kiss, pulling her flush against him as he leaned back against the counter and wrapped both arms fully around her waist, warm and solid and real and completely hers. He tasted like tea and the three spoonfuls of sugar that he always put in his tea and his mouth fit hers perfectly and Jemma felt impossibly, brilliantly happy. They were both gasping for breath when he pulled away and it was only a moment before Jemma leaned back in again, giggling at his squeak when she slipped one hand beneath his flannel shirt to skim over the muscles of his back. She was going to memorize him, she realized with satisfaction, learn him inside out until she could close her eyes and summon him up without even having to think about it twice, until she knew him just as well as she knew herself, and all she wanted was to start this very moment.

That was when her door swung open and a cacophony of voices erupted into her apartment and she remembered that she'd left the door unlocked. Everyone had decided to arrive at once, probably as a result of one of Coulson's carpool efforts, everyone was staring at her and Fitz, and everyone looked absolutely delighted about it. Skye was crowing something about how she'd called it from the very beginning, Coulson was already asking questions and how and when and did they know how proud he was of them, Callie was just squealing, Hunter was muttering something that sounded like “about damn time” and Mack was echoing it, Darcy was alternating between telling them how adorable they were and declaring that someone named Loki could suck it, Trip was congratulating them with a huge grin on his face, Bobbi just looked incredibly smug that she'd been right, and May...May was actually smiling.

“Shut it, all of you,” Fitz said firmly and kissed her again. They didn't, everyone talking over each other in a great wave of excitement, until finally Fitz had to let her go and let everyone stop hovering around the door and swarm into her apartment. Her friends—her family, really—were perching on the couches and depositing presents for the Secret Santa exchange under her tree and already starting in on a new batch of the cookie dough and surrounding her with hugs and congratulations and warmth and love...Jemma shut her eyes, felt Fitz weave her hand through his, and thought that she had never been happier.


End file.
